You keep what you kill

(Note: I would have loved to add some pictures to this post, but Google Blogger seems to be broken.) Yeah. So ZQN then. It's easy to hate this place. It's very much like a mixture of Switzerland and Estes Park, CO. But on the other hand, there's so much great scenery and nature on its doorstep which costs nothing. So I think I found the right approach: Enjoy the views and hikes and beat up a couple of backpackers in town in the evening for fun and exercise. Bloody hippies, they wouldn't even fight back at first, where's the sport in that? Anyway, ZQN brought the first real peak, my good old friend Ben Lomond. I had been up there in late March 2004 - back then ZQN was completely different from today. But the mountain hasn't changed much. Back then, I was with a friend and we basically ran up and down in ca. 3,5 hours altogether. Crazy. Our knees hurt for months afterwards. This time I was smarter (and the Reisebegleitung is very much against running anyway) and

We enjoyed the sun in chc for three days and had a very nice new year's eve dinner with another German couple staying in the same cottage. Next was Dunedin, as requested by the reisebegleitung. We detoured through Geraldine to have lunch at Cafe Verde again, managed to catch a sunny patch while visiting Moeraki and its beautiful beach with the strange boulders, and arrived at Billy Brown's hostel early afternoon. Couldn't get up the driveway though because the combination of steepness plus bend plus mud was beyond the capabilities of our 2WD rental car. Nevermind, I always enjoy a bit of exercise. :-) What a nice hostel! Definitely a 10 on the hitler scale, towels, views, birds, clean, cosy. Beautiful spot! We wanted to have dinner at the Lebanese cafe we'd enjoyed so much on our last visit to Dunedin, but alas there's now a Thai restaurant in its place and it's crap. Repeat: crap. Don't eat at the Thai place called sth with "chilli" as part of the

I have just discovered time travel! I'm in the embarrassingly mediocre cx lounge at Melbourne airport. The wifi is slower than my modem connection I had in 1997 and the computer are running IE6! Seriously man, no kidding. I don't fucking believe it, how backwards is that? The food is pretty much non-existent, all in all another reason never to travel cx again. I still haven't received any compensation for the food poisoning or the dysfunctional seat btw. So, again, it's time to say a hearty FUCK YOU Cathay Pacific. You're most welcome to it.

That's one of the many unpublished songs by Joy Division. Never made it onto any of their records. Rumours have it that the singer killed himself after an unfortunate love affair with a british bulldog was discovered by the yellow press. Not the British Bulldog, since homosexuality would have been just fine for the goth community. What's the wrestling world come to anyway? Strictly downhill since the times of Horst Brack der Bestrafer. But I'm not here to write about wrestling, I'm here to fight for the right to love animals!  We picked up the car in Queenstown and immediately left town. I think that's still the best thing you can do about Queenstown - get out of there asap. I was there 9 years ago and the change is frightening. This is Switzerland. Period. Well, there are a few things which are good about ZQN, but more of this later. First, more erratic breaks in the narrative. The east coast north of Whangarei is not called the Pohutukawa Coast for nothing. I

... dann bin ich durch fuer heute. Let's all sing: FUCK CATHAY PACIFIC! A warning to the general public: Cathay Pacific gives out poisonous food on their flights to passengers and does not even compensate them for their losses and injuries. I searched for words but all I can come up with is:   Fuck you, I hope you all die in a horrible and slow and torturous manner.

Did I rave enough about the Waitakere Ranges and the black sand beaches on Auckland's doorstep? Probably not. Man, it's just a 20 minutes drive from the airport. And so beautiful. you can molest that sheep without anyone knowing. I give it a Hitler Rating of 10. And towels, yeah, there were towels. We flew from AKL to ZQN on a Saturday, unfortunately my navigational system had a slight glitch and we missed the flight by 2 minutes. Damn. Luckily, AirNZ has standby fares and we managed to get on the next flight for relatively little money. Would never work in Germany, you are notified 15 minutes before take-off that you've got a seat (or not) ... but the great thing about NZ is that they have not (yet?) given in to the whole "security" bullshit propaganda. Love. Btw, on the way from Whangarei to Waitakere we detoured through Matakana and I can tell you, it's worth it! Food. Food. And great food. Everywhere. Absolutely worth the few extra k. Speaking of food,

Der groesste und ekelhafteste Haufen sind aber nicht baertige Sozialarbeiter oder Farmer, die Tiere schaenden, sondern die ollen Pornofussballfunktionaere. Das waere mal ein Ziel fuer Alk-Aida, da wuerde ich mir sogar ein Fanshirt kaufen. Am besten zusammen mit der Innenministerkonferenz. Ich habe definitiv keinen Bock mehr auf die Scheisse. Die Vereine merchandisen sich zu Tode, Mindestverzehrkarten in Stadien, getrennte Blocks fuer "Auswaertsfans", Einlass nur noch mit Fingerabdruck und DNA-Probe. Man wuenscht sich die Zeiten zurueck, als es wirklich noch gekracht hat, noch auf die Fresse gab, die sind aber ja schon lange vorbei ... familienfroindliches Stadion mit Langnese-Fanblock und entsprechenden Preisen hat dafuer gesorgt, die harten Hauer treffen sich seit zwanzig Jahren woanders. Ich muss mir einen anderen Sport suchen, soviel steht fest.

Man, I had recurring nightmares of bearded men with pointy hats fucking sheep for a couple of days. That movie should really be x-rated! Luckily, we had a good time to make up for it. Xmas was a bit of rain and a bit of sun, so no really long tracks, which suited the Reisebegleitung very much, but still fantastic views. We had Whangarei Botanic Gardens, which are in an old quarry site for ourselves on the 25th, we went there when the sun came out after a shower and it was stunningly beautiful. And no four legged creatures to sodomize. Ocean Beach was dramatic, nice waves and nice dunes to run up and down. And not a soul around. To me, Whangarei is one of the most underrated parts of NZ, which is kinda nice since you have a lot of unspoilt, uncrowded places, some of the nicest beachest and walks I've seen ... . We stayed at a very nice B&B, Kauri Villas , great location on Whangarei Heads and great breakfast, I'm still dreaming of Drew's homemade marmal